Posted
by
Cliffon Saturday January 13, 2007 @07:23AM
from the worthwhile-but-pigs-are-likely-to-fly-first dept.

thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

A school district in Massachusetts today voted to remove all references to "imperial" and "metric" from their science and mathematics curricula, after complaints from a parent that 'cubits' were not receiving equal time in the classroom. A spokeswoman for the district board said today that if scientists themselves cannot agree on the matter...

Heh, where are the chains, nails, bottles and pottles? BTW, I prefer my beer measured in firkins - if only people could decide how much exactly a firkin is. That is the big problem with the old units - not the unit iself - the lack of standardization is the problem. An English foot, Dutch foot and American foot are all different - same with everything depending on those, but volumetrics are just as bad.

You could buy a firkin of beer in the country side and sell it in London for the same price, at a tidy profit. You could do the same with a gallon of gasoline bought in Canada and then resold a few yards to the south accross the American border...

In an old Dutch City like New York, the land titles were a huge mess, with Dutch, English and American measures.

I find the greatest problem with the imperial units to rather be the interdependencies between them. With the metric system, those are standardized for all units. Just as you have kilogram and milligram, you have kilometer, millimeter, kilosecond, millisecond, and so on, and they are always apart by even powers of ten. You also have meters, square meters and cubic meters, with the special case of the liter being a cubic decimeter. In the imperial system (I don't even remember it all), you have 1 mile, being 1760 yards, each being 3 feet, each being 12 inch. I always see smaller things being measured in units like 1/3, 1/12 or 1/16 inch. Then there is 231 cubic inches = 1 gallon, each being 4 quarts, each being 2 pints, each being 16 fluid ounce.

Even if all the world standardized their feet on being a U.S. foot, that problem wouldn't disappear.

NASA has ostensibly used the metric system since about 1990, the statement said, but English units are still employed on some missions, and a few projects use both. NASA uses both English and metric aboard the International Space Station. The dual strategy led to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter robotic probe in 1999; a contractor provided thruster firing data in English units while NASA was calculating in metric.

I'm a young fellow from Australia, and I guess from my perspective growing up in a metric society perhaps has given me biased for the way we measure things.
Our Television so saturated with American television has acustomed me to seeing your world in imperial measurements. There's just something about an American house built on inches compared to an Australian building built in centimetres - I guess it comes down to culture.
At the end of the string though, we are slowly moving to a globalisation - the ab

I am a mechanical engineer who works on government contracts. I think it's a chicken and egg thing. I design in inches because the materials I buy come in inches. But the material I buy comes in inches because I'm not demanding metric materials. But whenever I do a dynamics calculation I always convert everything to metric do the calcs and then convert the answer back to imperial. I still get confused using LBM and Slugs and g.

Once one has both sets of tools, it ceases to matter what you're working on as you have the correct tool.

You say that as if having twice as many tools doesn't cost anything and doesn't take up twice as much space.

Also, how many bolts have been stripped because someone wasn't careful and tried to use an SAE wrench instead of a metric one? How much time has been wasted trying to figure out if you need SAE or metric?

there's really no advantage to either method

But there is a huge advantage to going with only one rather than both - and since everyone else in the world uses metric, why not use it too? And actually there is a pretty big advantage to metric - you don't have to remember that there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and some other random number of yards in a mile. Pushing a decimal around is just so much easier.

I don't expect us to ever switch, but much more because we're obstinate than because of any sort of rational cost-benefit analysis.

1. You, the engineer needed to buy two tools to do the same job.2. Somewhere in a factory far far away, someone needed to develop two molds, one for the metric set, one for the imperial set and all the other overhead involved with selling two different products.

I agree the most Americans wouldn't want to learn something new and would rather begrudge the rest of the world (as per the norm) by doing things your own way. Think of yourselves as the Sony of countries. You only inter operate when its in your best interest.

I live in the United States and learned the metric system in elementary school in 1975. My two children learned the metric system in elementary school just a few years ago.

Americans know the metric system. We see the units used on almost all food packaging, too. I have lived in Japan for 9 years and never had a problem with measurements there, either. I also learned SI units for physics class.

The hardest part of the metric system to me is not converting measurements, it's the intuitive feel for a liter, gram, or kilometer. My biggest hang up is temperature. I know that degrees 72F is comfortable and know that a 24C degree room is comfortable, too. However, I will always think internally in degrees Fahrenheit till the day I die. It is what it is.

Please, do not insinuate, however, that Americans do not know the metric system. You can learn it in about 5 minutes. You come off in your post as a bit arrogant and mis-guided.

Changing your internal thinking is entirely possible. I remember after I had been in Australia a few months, a friend from the states mentioned their 60 degree weather and I about died until I realized he meant fahrenheit. I hadn't realized I had stopped converting until then.

Well...most people here in europe thought "no matter what currency they give us....I will think internally in...say, Italian Lira, for as long as I shall live".

Now, some 5 years after the EURO introduction, most people I know never make a conversion before judging prices, fees and such..It became part of our life like the older currency. It did have some economic effects at various levels, but that's another story.The important thing is that most people, even elderly that "you wouldn't know" assimilated the transition.

I think you can do the same in the US.Come on, you have to make the last step...it's just a matter of feet...I mean meters! Meters!!

I will always think internally in degrees Fahrenheit till the day I die. It is what it is.

I think you'll find that your mind is surprisingly flexible.

Personally, I started with the metric system but moved to the US when I was ten. When I left the US nine years later I was just like you - using SAE because it felt right. I've now been in Europe for four years and I've completely switched back to the metric system.

"When I lived in the US I learned to quickly convert Fahrenheit to Celcius in my head so I could understand the temperature. It was annoying but after a few weeks it was automatic."

I think that is the one that would bother me the most!! I know how to dress if it is 32F, or 40F, or 99F.

I'd be lost with whatever the equivalents in C are...(yes, I'm too lazy to look up a converter). But really...most people in the US seldom have a need for accuracy needed in science. For daily life...the mile, mph, mpg...temperature in F is all way too ingrained into the culture and just isn't going to change anytime soon. Most people in the US have very little if any contact with any else in the world besides possibly a chat room on the internet....so, no one here generally sees any reason to change to 'go along' with the rest of the world. They don't see or touch the rest of the world, so, it pretty much doesn't exist to them.

I'm a Canadian living in the US. Temperatures are about the biggest thing that bothers me down here. Most groceries have the metric equivalents written in smaller letters, and portion sizes are usually the same as in Canada anyways. So it doesn't bother me very often, unless I am buying fountain pop, and someone tells me the drink sizes in ounces. Then I will just give them a blank look for a minute, and ask to see the cups. I also had difficulty when mailing a letter. I was quoted prices by the ounce. But the guy working there converted it to grams for me right off the top of his head (I was grateful).

But I have a fast way of converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, with a reasonably small margin of error for common values. 100F is more or less the same as 40C. Every degree in Celsius is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So if someone tells you that it's 80 degrees, you can guess that it's about 30C. It isn't exact, but it's within about 5 degrees, which is good enough for the most part. It at least tells you what to wear.

I'm an American who's trying to use Celsius. A dead-easy conversion formula is double and add 30 (for C->F). It isn't perfect, but it works well for most temperatures. Obviously, F->C, which is probably better for you is subtract 30 and divide by 2.

It is not even so much as that the rest of the world doesn't exist. It's more like out of sight, out of mind. The grand-parent is correct that most Americans will never have any contact with people from another country (Outside Canada or Mexico). The same thing is true that most Europeans will not have any contact with Americans. Honestly, with a giant body of water between the two it isn't exactly easy. Planes don't count. Most people don't make day trips by plane:) I can easily get to Canada with in 2 hours, less if it is a slow day at the border. I can't say the same about France or Germany. But now I'm rambling. So I'll stop.

DHS lost a $50 thousand surveillance van because a Ford engineering team used metric units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional Imperial system for a key driving operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

As a result of this mishap, the Van operator misjudged the driving angle, and crashed into a neighbors pool.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to prevent this sort of confusion by converting the agency from the old "Imperial" measuring system of English miles to a new "American" measuring system utilizing "freedom miles".

At the end of the day, can you imagine how many millions of man-hours of effort would go into such a conversion? For what? UNITY, so that every nation could be the same? I thought DIVERSITY was supposed to be the valued goal?

Oh please. I agree with the rest of your post, but you can't argue that imperial vs metric is about diversity vs uniformity. It's quite clearly being argued because of the difficulties in conversion, not some assault on the brave USA, willing to stand alone from the metric crowd of sheep.

Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.

Exactly. If I'm at the grocery store, and I need to integrate a trigonometric function in order to determine how much milk I should buy (seeing as how you can roughly approximate the demand during the day with a sine curve), and I'm stuck with degrees, it'll be hell to integrate, when compared to radians.

Put into Slashdot terms, note that if you get rid of the Imperial Inch, say goodbye to "point" font-sizes; no more will you be able to specify a simple 12pt (ie, 12/72 of an inch), but rather 4.233mm! Selection boxes just got wider, eating up all that valuable screen real-estate. Speaking of, no more DPI or PPI resolution metrics.

Bullshit. In almost every metric country, type is measured in points. Certainly from my personal experience, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India and the UK, which are all metric in most respects. There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI. And the idea of a font "size" is actually fairly arbitrary and fuzzy. It's generally defined as the smallest line spacing so that the descenders of one line do not collide with the ascenders of the line below. But there are many cases where this rule is violated. Consider it more like women's dress sizes rather than relating to a specific dimension.

Of course, we can thank Adobe for embedding their definition of the point = 1/72" in PostScript (which is slightly larger then the older traditional point.) Page sizes however are often quoted in mm.

However, I suspect you are trolling. If so, well done. I also have to suspect that the site linked in the summary , http://www.freedom2measure.org/ [freedom2measure.org] may be a parody.

The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units.

... This is an utterly arbitrary way of fixing the size of a degree. In fact, under SI, water freezes at 273.16 K.

...Since the readership of most international US publications is majority American, American units should come first. (In survey after survey, clear majorities of all age groups in the US are more comfortable with American units.)

Seriously, it is scary that it is possible for someone to reason so badly.

Firstly, he claims conversion is implicit and universal despite mars probes crashing because obviously people DO forget to do it sometimes. Then he throws up some rhetoric involving binary and hexadecimal, number systems which are only used in low level computing because of their affinity with hardware with having two general purpose unit systems used in parallel. Then he brings up seconds, minutes, hours and days when anyone who knows anything about metric knows that only seconds are part of SI, the rest should never be used in calculations. Then he claims that points are somehow better than millimeters because he likes his fonts at exactly 12pt and is not willing to have his fonts 5% smaller to make them 4mm but instead NEEDS that extra.233 millimeters to make his fonts JUST RIGHT but doesn't want to be bothered typing it in. Of course if someone wanted 4mm fonts they would need to type in 11.3394pt in the current system, but of course we all know that fonts are especially right when they are at even numbers of points rather than millimeters. What the hell is a point anyway? Millimeters are used in carpentry, particle physics and trade, points are just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement.

He summarizes in extolling the virtues of diversity. Diversity is great, don't you just love the Gnome and KDE flamewars on slashdot because any given application only really works properly and looks right with one desktop. And how you can't run OSX applications on your linux box. And how there are more BSDs that you can name but only one of them has proper SMP support but it is neither the one that is portable nor the one which is secure nor the one that is modular. You've gotta love the web pages designed around IE's quirks that don't quite look right under firefox. Oh, and how IPSEC has two types of header which can be used with either of the two modes and how nobody quite supports it because it's too "diverse". I can't begin to explain how having two types of high density optical disk has helped me enjoy high definition video so much quicker. Ever tried to hook up the tail lights of a friends trailer to your car and found out the plug is different? Ever bought some electric guismo from overseas but the plug doesn't fit without an ugly adapter?

In art, food and society you have diversity, in science and technology you have incompatibility.

Nobody could be dumb enough to truly think what the OP thinks, though I live in Australia where we switched to metrics in the 60s to the 80s and cannot imagine anyone having any trouble. That is why I think the OP is a troll or just having a little sarcastic joke that nobody got.

Surely, everyone knows that the proper measure for fuel economy is the square millimetre (or millimeter for the other side of the pond). After all, we're dividing volume by distance here, so naturally we get an area. And this measure has an obvious geometric interpretation: Distribute the fuel needed to drive a certain distance as a very thin tube along that entire distance, and measure its cross section.

If children aren't taught the metric system, they'll have to learn it. As a scientist, I can attest to the massive superiority of the metric system for scientific measurements et cetera, after all, that's partly what it was DESIGNED for. (1cm^3 of pure water doesn't weight 1g at sea level for no reason, for example...).

I like in England, where we're mostly metric (although a lot of Imperial units are still used), but ALL scientists use metric for everything. It's not because of some magical superiorty science that normal people need either, it's mostly because multiplying by 10 is a lot easier than multiplying by 12 then 16 then 8, or whatever!

I have only one hold out personally for the Imperial System and that's the measure of temperature. Celsius is all fine and good when using it in a scientific scope, but when talking about the weather, the units are TOO big. The difference between 12C and 13C is too great.
A degree in Fahrenheit is about the right size when thinking if something is hot or cold. It may just be my lack of thinking about the temperature outside in Celsius, but being comfortable with both measurements, Fahrenheit allows me to predict a little better what it will feel like when I walk out the door.

It's not because of some magical superiorty science that normal people need either, it's mostly because multiplying by 10 is a lot easier than multiplying by 12 then 16 then 8, or whatever!

It's not easier if we were using a base-16 numbering system!

Ok, but seriously, it is an issue of context. If you're a scientist doing scientific research, by all means, use the metric system. However, for some purposes, the metric system isn't superior.

The easiest example I can think of is temperature. I've been told by lots of people that we (I'm American) should use the Celsius for temperatures. They tell me, "It makes a lot more sense, and it's more elegant. 0 degrees is the temperature that water freezes, and 100 degrees is when it boils. Think of how nice that is. It makes so much sense for cooking and scientific experiments..."

Well, that's fine, and so I support anyone who wants to use Celsius measurements for cooking or science. However, think for a second about the Fahrenheit scale. The range of 0-100 degrees is roughly the temperature in which human being can live. The exact range that's comfortable for people depends on various things, including the specific person, clothing, wind and humidity, etc. However, somewhere 100 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature that people need to be careful about heat-stroke, and around 0 degrees is where people are in danger of freezing to death or getting frostbite, even if they're wearing warm clothes.

So while Celsius makes sense for some scientific purposes, I think Fahrenheit is where it's at for talking about weather. Likewise, if I need to estimate the length of the room and I don't have a measuring device, do you know how I do it? I walk, one foot in front of the other, and see how many steps it takes. My feet are each just about 1 foot long, and it works pretty reliably. If you want argue that meters are better for scientific purposes, manufacturing, or even construction, then by all means do so. However, different units are more appropriate for measuring different things, so don't try to tell me that I can't use Imperial units where it makes sense.

While metric was designed for science, imperial was designed for "normal" use. While metric designates zero degrees and 100 degrees the freezing and boiling points of water, imperial ties them to a reasonable estimate for the coldest and warmest days in a temperate climate zone. Having a basic unit of measurement between a cm and a m (ie a foot) seems nicely convenient for measuring things at the size of an average human work product, given the size of our hands, feet, etc

The argument that imperial is better for daily use is repeated here over and over. However I have been using metric system all my life and it is intuitive for me that where I live there is at least 30C in hot summer, about 20C in spring and 0C to -15C in winter (except January 2007). I can easily estimate dimensions of things in cm by looking at them, their weight in kg by trying to pick them up etc. I know how 500ml of beer will affect me and what will happen after four shots of 100g vodka glasses (or 8 x 50g, both are common).

There is nothing special about imperial or metric system for daily use. You just have to be accustomed to it.

A unit between cm and m exists: 1dm = 10cm = 0.1m, but is rarely used (at least here).

> With SI, on the other hand, many divisors are problematic. What's a third of a metre? [...] What's a twelfth of a litre?

Those are extremely popular and somewhat contrived examples to prove the superiority of the imperial system. Yet what's so special about easy division by three or by 12? When you happen to need it, that's fine, but more often than not you will find yourself having to divide by four instead: estimating the amount of material needed for the circumference of a rectangle (amount of fencing, sheetrock, etc). For division by four neither system is vastly superior.

Where the imperial system is mind-numbingly and idiotically inadequate is in day-to-day length measurements. If you have have ever done any carpentry work and encountered the endless fractional "standard" sizes such as thicknesses of 5/8" or 31/32", and then tried to add those together while holding a bunch of nails between your lips, a 2x4 in one hand and a hammer in the other, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, it is a contrived example, but not by much. Addition of lengths with fractions of differing denominators is so common in everyday life that the imperial system is pretty much untenable for that reason alone. And please spare me any erudite counter examples showing how some sophisticated fractional magic actually makes it EASIER, because no carpenter or contractor I've ever met knows and uses those--they all fudge the fractions by "gut feeling" and consider accuracy to half an inch or so "good enough".

Metric makes the life of a carpenter infinitely easier. Except for fine woodwork the millimeter is the highest accuracy you need on a construction site, and you can measure and add together lengths of centimeters and millimeters all day long in your head without any loss of accuracy or confusion. Try it sometime. Incidentally, you don't really need a unit between the meter and the centimeter. While the decimeter is not explicitly used much, implicitly people have a good feel for it. Seeing a measurement of 0.3m you don't have to perform mental gymnastics to know that it's 30cm, and people intuitively have a very good feel for the length of 10cm (about the width of a hand), so they can easily visualize fractions of a meter.

It should have been MGS. (meter-gram-second) The base units should not have prefixes like "kilo" and "centi".

Furthermore, there is nothing nice about the sizes of metric units. Nice units are ones that eliminate pointless numeric constants. Using natural units [wikipedia.org], e=mc^2 becomes e=m. Using natural units, the ideal gas law loses the R constant. Isn't that way better?

Metric is nothing special. For example, the meter is based on an erroneous measurement across France. This bad measurement was used to estimate the size of the Earth so that the meter could be claimed to have a tie to the size of the Earth. (which isn't unchanging anyway, even if it were perfectly round!) We might as well use a foot defined as the distance traveled by light in a particular amount of time, with that time amount chosen so that a foot just happens to match King George's foot.

Base 10 isn't special either. Binary is special, and trivially convertable to the more-compact hexadecimal.

I think that is really the foundation. You can set your indoor/outdoor thermometer or weather applet to metric and use the metric side of a ruler by yourself. If you have an older car it can be easy to get used to looking at the metric conversions of various speed limits. Probably nobody who can get sued is going to recommend setting your LCD to km but rough conversions in your head aren't exactly hard (and, let's be honest, you're blending in with traffic anyway, right?). And, as an aside, it wouldn't

...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.

Got to disagree with that. There are a few hold-outs that have thus far resisted metrification - basically anything that involves old, miserable people - like speed limits, temperature, clothing and body weight. And there were some big arguments about weighing fruit (I'm still amazed that people can get so worked up about units). But everything else is pretty much metric: the plumbing in your house, screws in your electrical system, paper sizes, temperature of your oven, power of your lightbulbs (ergs/s anyone?), anything to do with engineering or science. Everybody who's serious is using metric.

Well... one of the problems I have had since I arrived is metrics, in Mexico we use the metric system for everything but here in the UK they measure things in Stones, Feet (right now I am trying to figure out what length of curtaints ["blinds"] do I need because they sell them in 'feet'), Pints, etc.

Now, about the main question, I do not think it is at all difficult. One of the fears I had when I was planning to come to UK was the monetary system. My father came to the UK some years ago (15 maybe) and they still used that strange system where 12 shillings was a quarter and 8 quarters was a pound (I am just babbling what I remember... those are not accurate numbers)... fortunately Britain changed to a normal 100 cents = 1 pound (decimal system yahoo!). I they could do it with *money* then I am sure Americans can do it with metrics no?... now, to make Poms to drive at the *right* side of the road;-)

Regarding paper sizes: I don't know about the area (others have posted on that), but the ratio of the l:w dimensions is 1:sqrt(2). So A1 is an A0 cut in half. A2 is an A1 cut in half and so on. But for all A0, A1, etc., the l:w ratio is still 1:sqrt(2).

Kind of true... it's not that strict though. Yes, road signs here are in miles and mph, and many people use feet and inches, but metric is taught in school so most people under 30 generally use metres and centimetres.

It's also worth noting what happened a couple of years ago (most people blame the EU) - greengrocers had to start listing prices in pounds (the currency) per kilogramme rather than pounds per pound. There was a lashback at the time but most people seem to have accepted it (and most greengrocers list both now).

Having said that, if somebody asks my weight or height, I'd tell them in stones and feet, so we still have a way to go.

There is a drive to convert road signs to metric - again, partly because of our EU membership - but there's no easy, straightforward way to do it. One interesting idea, coupling with the concept of reducing our speed limits in general, is to leave the speed limit signs as they are but tell everyone that they now refer to KPH rather than MPH (ie. a 30 MPH limit becomes a 30 KPH limit). But of course, the number of people who want our speed limits reduced is relatively small, and that would be a much harder change to propose than metric!

It's taught in school in the US as well. I can't tell from your comment - did you not know that?

The problem in the US is, we don't actually use it outside of school (science classes mostly) so most people fall back on what's all around them. It's kind of sad. The military uses it though, and some large percentage of Americans have been in the military (in case you couldn't tell, ha ha). The M-16 was designed to be exactly 1 meter long so that every soldier could have a familiar reference. It's still what I think of when I need to estimate meters.

Having said that, if somebody asks my weight or height, I'd tell them in stones and feet, so we still have a way to go.

Well, I guess it depends on what situations you need to know things like weight for. I'm a windsurfer and I would always quote my weight in kilos since it makes working out things like volume of water displaced much easier (1 kilo == 1 litre of fresh water).

And whilst I may know specific values (my height, weight, etc) in imperial, I have no idea how to do calculations with those values. If I'm going to calculate anything I use metric (how many ounces in a pound? pounds in a stone? I have no idea - I'd have to look them up).

Also, add the lack of standardisation in imperial units - the Americans like to call them "English units", but the gallons (rarely, these days) used in England aren't the same size as the American gallons...

There is a drive to convert road signs to metric - again, partly because of our EU membership - but there's no easy, straightforward way to do it.

They managed it in Ireland without any real problems, ISTR the new signs just have "Km/h" marked on them below the speed. All the cars have both KM/h and MPH marked on the speedo (although I must admit that the KM/h markings on my car are a bit too small to read while you're going along the road). I for one would welcome a complete switch to kilometres though - it would make working out stuff like fuel consumption much easier (which is still quoted in miles per gallon despite the fact that fuel hasn't been sold in gallons for at least 20 years, not to mention the disparity between US gallons and British gallons which means you're never entirely sure which units are being used).

What a strange country you must live in and you must not have travelled at all.Alcohol is still sold in standard amounts in bars in metric countries too and that's what you ask for; people buy as much fruit as they need/want not a specific amount as they're sold in both bags of apples (which are neither 1 pound or 1 kilo) or loose so you can buy what you want; people order coke in cans because funnily enough you can't buy it in anything else but cans or bottles. The development of the language had nothing to do with imperial measurements; someone somewhere had to define what a pint/pound/inch actually represents and guess what it was this [wikipedia.org] in the UK.

In France, home of the metric system you *have* to buy one gram, one kilo or one ton of anything because there aren't any units in between. There are gendarmes everywhere making sure nobody bends the rules. And the fines are very stiff (up to a ton of euros).

It's not always easy I tell you. Sitting at the terrace of a café, sipping at a one litre cup of expresso... metric has its drawbacks.

...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.

This isn't really true. Britons uses imperial measurements a lot for day to day use, but you'll find that anywhere something needs to be done precisely, it's done in metric.

For example, the hardware store will sell the same standardised pieces that have been around for years, and these will be in imperial. But I doubt you'll find a building site in the country which is working in anything apart from metric. Any architecht would make plans in metric, as would any engineer.

General rule of thumb would be imperial for casual stuff, metric for work - although there are going to be a few exceptions to this;)

...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.

Actually it's a mix. People talk in miles, stones, pints and inches (for certain body parts). But then they'll happily talk centimetres, metres, kilograms or litres for other things. As for hardware stores, it is almost entirely metric with just vestiges of imperial here and there. Everything from screws, nails, flooring, tiles, boards is all measured in metric. A short trip to an online DIY site such as www.screwfix.com would confirm that.

Certainly it's less metric than the rest of Europe, but not massively so. Anyway, Ireland demonstrates that the UK could convert to KM for road distances and speed without the collapse of civilization - the changeover happened virtually over night.

It's all metric but for a couple of cases. Cars and roads being the notable ones. given the cost of changing all the signs at once it's easy to see why. The UK government should just begin introducing km signs to replace old ones.

What is the reason for this change? As another poster has said, if you want to use the metric system, just use it.

Most, if not all of the problems I deal with (mechanical engineering) have systems and specifications that are in metric units now. Most (nearly all) national standards I deal with are already in metric units. CAD and analysis systems can switch units without problems.

What use is it to change units for the general population? Is there a need to buy apples in Kg? Or gasoline in Liters? Medicine is specified in Mg. Engine displacement is shown in Liters. Should 2x4's be 50x100's?

"Because the US needs to pull its finger out and get with the program."

What, that's it?

We're getting along fine, our units of measure are, by definition, exactly as accurate as SI units. SI doesn't have a monopoly on using either decimals or prefixes, so even decimalization isn't a particularly compelling reason. There is no technical reason for a compulsory switch.

Well, I am an American living in the UK. The UK officially uses metric but all the road signs and speedometers in cars use Miles per Hour, all distances on signs are also in miles, people still count their weight in Stones, and I can still buy pints at the pub. I wonder if we should still count the UK as a metric using nation.

I'm an Australian living in the UK, and for sure there are still some Imperial hangovers here in the areas you mention. Australia is fully metric-ised, although you will still find the occasional reference to heights and weights in feet & stones, mainly from the older generation.And while the UK may still have mile signs on the road and some people (again mainly older people) measure their height and weight using the old system, everything else is metric. It's just "cuter" to say "he's 6ft tall", rather

I'm currently studying Physics in the UK but come from one of the most SI countries in the world, Luxembourg. When talking to people I discovered that even though the UK has officially gone metric most people still think in imperial units when it comes to body weight and height, liquid volumes, speeds and distances (long and short) and those who I asked said they found it hard to picture 170cm or 70kg, very common numbers which I find extremely natural, much preferring "feet/inches" and "stones".

I must admit however that the foot is a very appealing unit in that it can be easily measured using common body parts such as the hand-elbow distance or the foot.

I think the problem is that the parents who grew up with imperial units use them in day to day conversation, hence associating different benchmark sizes with specific words in their children's developing minds, making a natural transition to metric quite difficult, but certainly not impossible... i guess the situation will improve once britain follows ireland in getting the traffic system metricized.

From a link on the freedom2measure site:Sexist
The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units. Perhaps, if they had, the value of the practical units used in those tasks undertaken by woman at the time would have been recognized.

I can understand trying to make a point against the metric system, but this!? Any other real arguments won't be taken serious anymore..Not to mention that I doubt women had any say in the current system.

Start with the schools. It will require quite a bit of initial investment, but it is the only way to introduce a new mindset to the public. You'll need to replace a LOT of textbooks (maths problems will need to be posed in metric terms, same for science books, etc) and all of your measuring devices will need replacing with metric versions (throw out those yard sticks and replace them with metre rules). If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.

Then comes the tricky part: legislation. The resistance from the lazy public and business will be incredible - it'll be seen as one extra unnecessary expense - but it has to be done. It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.

That should be enough to get the ball rolling, but it's a long process, and - as the poster above pointed out - it may not stick right away. The UK has used metric officially for many years now but go into a hardware store and they'll still sell you a length of 2-by-4.

It may take many years to kill off Imperial measurements, but I think those are the two most important steps to affect the change.

You'll need to replace a LOT of textbooks (maths problems will need to be posed in metric terms, same for science books, etc) and all of your measuring devices will need replacing with metric versions (throw out those yard sticks and replace them with metre rules).

Textbooks in the United States already use metric units, and have now for decades.

If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.

Everybody in the United States under the age of forty grew up learning metric terms. Virtually nobody in the United States under the age of forty, unless such person has some specific technical reason for doing so, has any interest in using metric terms in day-to-day life.

It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.

This is already the case. A can of cola in the U.S. reads "12 fl. oz. (355 mL)". A bag of microwave popcorn states "1.5 oz. (42.5g)". A snack bar reads "1.59 oz (45g)". No consumer product is sold without both Imperial and metric measurements.

Then comes the tricky part: legislation. The resistance from the lazy public and business will be incredible - it'll be seen as one extra unnecessary expense - but it has to be done.

If the public doesn't want it, and business doesn't want it, then who exactly is supposed to benefit?

Canada switched to the metric system decades ago. Being a British commonwealth for such a long time, of course most of us were well accustomed to Imperial units. I still remember as a kid, how my Mom was one of the holdouts for the Imperial system for a long time. She would tell me to get a quart or gallon of milk, and I would have to ask her how many liters that was.

The thing is that the metric system is officially used everywhere. Road signs, groceries, public schools, the works. The only basis that we have for even knowing the Imperial system is our parents. I've used the metric system my entire life. I know my height and weight in feet and lbs, but couldn't tell you what it is in metric units. But I can guess fairly accurately how much something weighs in kilograms, but I'm not so good with pounds. Likewise, I'm more comfortable with measuring things in meters, rather than feet.

A rather amusing story though. I am currently living in the US, trying to get by without using the old ways. I am not always successful. But I try. Anyways, I was on the phone with my Mom the other day, and she asked how warm it was here. I googled the answer, and got it in Fahrenheit (46F). I laughed, and said she would be right at home here, and gave her the answer in Fahrenheit without doing the conversion. I was rather amazed at her response. She told me that it's been so long since she's used the Imperial system that she's forgotten it. She honestly didn't remember what 46F was.

Anyways, my point is that it doesn't matter if the older people don't use the metric system. Teach it to the young, and switch the entire country to the metric system on all official items. It will all sort itself out in time.

Why bother? Seriously -- why bother? What real, practical value is there in forcing the general public to use one arbitrary (to them) set of measurements versus another arbitrary set of measurements? What does the public's use of miles, Fahrenheit, pounds, and acres have to do with business or government? Sure, sometimes there are mishaps when using mixed units, but they're rare enough that their widely-published details stick out in your mind because it's so rare. A good engineer realizes that units are arbitrary and can work with whatever measurement system she's given. Besides that, whether my car gets 22 mpg or 7.2 L/100km doesn't have an impact on people in the laboratory or the layout room. The scales, force gauges, and AutoCAD all switch back and forth effortlessly. Businesses already use the metric system when it suits them (it usually does). In fact our American units (they're not imperial units) are officially defined by the NIST in terms of metric units. Our land surveying system west of New England is irrevocably tied to the use of feet and acre systems.

I'm working in Canada now. Despite the fact that their government forced metric units on them, do you realize that virtually everyone (well, immigrants from metric countries notwithstanding) continues to use Imperial units (in this case, they are Imperial units -- 4.4L/gallon, etc) in their daily life? It's 82 outside, not 28. I weigh 190, not 86. I had a fever of 101, not 39.

What's really strange is working in Mexico, where they never officially use US units. Milk is sold in galones (gallons, yup, right on the label). Talking about small measurements is quite often done in pulgadas (inches). They don't use millas (miles) in normal conversation, but they all seem to have a general sense of what they are. Yardas may be well know because of American football, and Fahrenheit makes no sense to them, but they're fairly well versed in libras (pounds).

Me? I like the metric system, and use it where it makes sense to use it. But going through the expense of wholesale conversion to the metric system makes no sense and will cause more problems than it solves. Think of the sheer amount of measurements that would have to change. There's the mundane -- 37" TV's will have to change. But what about construction materials? Plumbing? Lumber? Fasteners? What about highway sytems? Exit signs, mile markers, speed limit signs, maps, documentation? The US survey system, then? Acres, townships, counties, baseline locations, meridian locations, title and deed documents? What about food packaging? Why eliminate US measurements when metric measurements are already there?

Interstate 19 between Tucson and Nogales, Arizona is labelled in km/h for some inexplicable reason. Is there a benefit to anyone there?

Because the imperial system is insane. The units used are more handy for measuring or describing things in everyday life, but when it comes to doing actual calculations, you are lost. The metric system measures things in tens. The imperial system, however, uses twos, threes, fours, fives, eights, tens, twelves, fourteens and sixteens [wikipedia.org] and more. How many cubic centimetres in a litre? 1000. How many cubic inches in a gallon? 231.

Ease of calculations is the key. If you don't do much actual mathematics in your

>>Ease of calculations is the key. If you don't do much actual mathematics in your daily life, you won't see the need for the metric system. If you're a scientist, you do, and you will.

Well, yeah, that's my point. I'm an engineer, and my American (global) Fortune 5 company is completely metric in its operations. So as a scientist (you) or engineer (me) we see the value of and use the metric system. There's no US law prohibiting us from doing so. Why, then, should we mandate that the country switch to the metric system? You and I already use it; why make Joe Blow purchase lunch meat priced at $x per 100/g?

Simply, what's the cost-benefit analysis of changing our society to the metric system?

I'm working in Canada now. Despite the fact that their government forced metric units on them, do you realize that virtually everyone (well, immigrants from metric countries notwithstanding) continues to use Imperial units (in this case, they are Imperial units -- 4.4L/gallon, etc) in their daily life? It's 82 outside, not 28. I weigh 190, not 86. I had a fever of 101, not 39.

Are you surrounded by old people? I am Canadian, I haven't heard temperatures in deg F for a long long time.

The Celsius scale is calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water. This is great for scientific use, but comes at the expense of sensitivity for day-to-day use. It is seldom that anyone wants to know the temperature outside as a fraction of the temperature required to make water boil (though the freezing point is of more use), and temperatures in habitable areas of the earth seldom exceed 50C. That means the upper half of the scale is not being used. Since a Fahrenheit degree is finer-grained than a Celsius degree and the endpoints of the scale more closely match the range of habitable temperatures, it makes more sense to use F outside of science and cooking, IMO.

I don't know where you work, but as an American scientist/engineer myself I always use metric in my professional work. Meters, kelvin, kilograms. In school (chemical engineering) we often worked with pounds and gallons since they're common in some industries, but we were thoroughly drilled in how to convert between units.

I honestly don't see the problem with using Imperial units in daily life as long as professionals use metric in their work. In many parts of the country, roads are spaced one mile apart. Converting to metric won't change that. Refrigerators are designed to hold a gallon of milk. Converting to metric would mean either misfitting jugs or odd quantity containers.

Let the public use Imperial units. They happen to be useful for human-scale measurements. Just be sure to teach students that metric is the professional system.

There is no doubt that if you are designing a system from scratch, the metric system is superior.

There is also no doubt that if you are in science and engineering, you should be using the metric system.

But for every day use? It does not matter one tiny bit. Whatever accurately supports commerce is really all that matters. And the Imperial system works in the US.

Some dirty secrets for you all who think the rest of the world has adopted: a lot of the Commonwealth nations have adopted the metric only in an official capacity. Go to the UK and see how often you see Imperial units.

There are BILLIONS(Maybe Trillions) of dollars worth of tools to use imperial units. Lumber is made in 2X4" pipe fittings are measured in inches, the handy use of fractional units when doing carpentry, which what's half of 5/8"? (A: 5/16") is a serious factor. The lifespan of all these tools, such as the tooling to roll steel and brass and aluminum into inch sizes etc is something no one ever talks about, how long does the largely theoretical "gain" made by switching to SI units take to pay off all the steel mills the lumber mills the switching over of all the plumbing in America to metric pipe fittings???? (Hint, civilization and technology are 90% plumbing)
Listen, I work in manufacturing, we have customers with english and metric prints, I convert back and forth on the fly a few hundred times some days. Not a problem, anyone who's a Scientist shouldn't be doing anything in imperial units at all anyway. So what's the problem? As for the "difficulty" in conversion, the imperial units are DEFINED in SI units, right? I know one inch =25.4 mm by definition.

So let my summarize by saying "Who will think of the rulers!" (And steel mills and pipe fittings and rolling mills and everything I'm ignorant of)

How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?" It would sure be convenient if everyone grew up speaking only English, but that's hardly going to convince the French or the Germans or the Chinese or.... "But people often have to learn English to participate in international life!" True...and lots of Americans learn the metric system for the same reason. Americans are actually rather "bilingual" with their units: we have gallons of milk and liters of soda, ounces of meat and milligrams of vitamins, 100-yard football fields and 100-m dashes.

Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales. (Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)

My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.

Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.

231. To quote a line from a certain video game, "Twenty-three is number one."

"Since he calculation using the metric system is really easy"

A US gallon is made up of:

4 quarts

8 pints

16 cups

128 fluid ounces

256 tablespoons

If you can't see the pattern and do that kind of math in your head, you don't belong on Slashdot.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with using decimal gallons (I fill up my car's gas tank with decimal gallons of gasoline all the time), but using binary in SI is strongly frowned upon by BIPM.

Or are you trying to focus on the conversion between volumic and cubic-linear measurements? First off, there's little point in it since converting between two such units is hardly useful in day-to-day operations, but even if it is, you're better off using using the US gallon than the liter because it has been far more consistent: 231 cubic inches since the eighteenth century. Initially, the liter was defined as a cubic decimeter, but then somebody had the idea to define it as "one kilogram of water," and despite protestations from metric fanbois, they're not the same thing. It was eventually changed back to "cubic decimeter," but now you're left with a system where "one liter" today is non-negligibly different from "one liter" a century ago.

A US pint is 16 fl oz but an Imperial pint is 20 fl oz. So crossing the atlantic, when I order a pint in a US pub (ok, I mean a large beer in a bar) I feel short changed. Far worse than the fractional percentage differences in the evolution of the litre (note spelling) - which mostly comes down to which is the prime unit. When I was at school we were taught that a kilogram was a litre of water (not the other way round) even though SI had moved on by then.

It doesn't "work", though. Metric/SI was designed to make inter-unit calculation as easy as possible. Imperial measurements don't work - they're crippled when compared to metric. Familiarity is no reason to hold society back.